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Emker Cel

Sea House founder and chairman Matt Kassell sometimes finds time to make music himself.

The first album (released in August 2016) was very much a solo affair, but a band was formed to play live, and songs were quickly written for the subsequent albums From The Waves (2018) and, after an extended break for fatherhood, lockdown, and a bad dose of long covid, You Are Everything You Are (2023), which included Understood, a collaboration with North-East independent music heroes Field Music.

2026 has seen the release of a singles compilation, Emker Cel Is Ten! which marks the first decade of EC music, and a new album called The Quietest Of Revolutions. This album shows an entirely different approach, just two acoustic guitars and two voices, with Sad Eyed Puffins’ Rita Baugh guesting.

Matt has also produced, co-written and played on many other artists’ work, both on and off the Sea House label, as well as making music videos, producing compilation albums and volunteering in various roles at The Sea House.

But what about that moniker? “Well”, says Matt, “I got very into audiology while lecturing on a media degree, and I read about a Turkish biologist by the name of Emker Aziz, who was one of the first people to discover that our senses are entirely cell-based. His work focused particularly on the genetics of audio receptors that act as transducers that convert sound waves into electrical stimuli that can be understood by the brain. Thus, the cell responsible for this transmission is named after him: the Emker Cell. I removed the last “l” to add a layer of mystery.”